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DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

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Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

#3

Looks like they are going to limit the APM of the AI. I wonder how they are going to decide the limit? I've never played StarCraft, but from what I understand very high APM is needed to play the game at the highest levels.

Probably an average of the best players.

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

#4

Looks like they are going to limit the APM of the AI. I wonder how they are going to decide the limit? I've never played StarCraft, but from what I understand very high APM is needed to play the game at the highest levels.

I've followed the professional StarCraft 2 scene for a long time now. There were a few players who were famous for having high APMs, here is an over-the-sholder view of one of them [1]. I don't have a reference but believe he used to play in the ~500APM range. That would probably be the upper limit of a human's ability.

[1] https://youtu.be/WHcl6Cs1FAM?t=7m57s

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

#5
> We’re particularly pleased that the environment we’ve worked with Blizzard to construct will be open and available to all researchers next year.

This is awesome. I've only ever reached the Platinum league in Starcraft II (1v1), but I'd almost feel more driven to create bots to (hopefully) surpass that skill level, than actually playing the game.

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

#6

Looks like they are going to limit the APM of the AI. I wonder how they are going to decide the limit? I've never played StarCraft, but from what I understand very high APM is needed to play the game at the highest levels.

I imagine they'll have separate AI brackets, and they could potentially simulate at multiple APM levels.

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

#7

Looks like they are going to limit the APM of the AI. I wonder how they are going to decide the limit? I've never played StarCraft, but from what I understand very high APM is needed to play the game at the highest levels.

probably limit it to human levels. 400 to 600 apm is around the limit for brief periods of time. It makes for an interesting optimization problem with how to use them though.

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

#9
This is so exciting. I've always wanted to program bots to play online games -- mainly for learning purposes. (Can I make a bot that plays better than me?)

But I've never done it because of the risk of bans. I'm glad that Blizzard has opened it up for people to experiment with this. I wonder how it will interact with any sort of anti-cheat systems in place, etc.

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

#10

Looks like they are going to limit the APM of the AI. I wonder how they are going to decide the limit? I've never played StarCraft, but from what I understand very high APM is needed to play the game at the highest levels.

High apm is required, yes. But most people push it by pushing it through spamming 1-2-3 (groups of your army). There was a pro player who didnt do it and he was around +- 70 APM.
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